409862 - Hard to figure out how to search history

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Firefox :: Bookmarks & History, defect)

Description

[Boris Zbarsky [:bzbarsky]]

BUILD: Current trunk from yesterday

STEPS TO REPRODUCE:
1) History > Show All History
2) Look at the text in the textbox at the top right in the new window
3) Search for something you visited recently
4) Look at the search results
5) Click "Selected Folder" button
6) Look at the search results

ACTUAL RESULTS:
Step 2: Says "search bookmarks"
Step 4: Shows results in "All bookmarks"
Step 6: Shows no results

EXPECTED RESULTS:
Step 2: Says "search history"
Step 4: Shows results in history
Step 6: Still shows results in history, since that's what's selected

It just took me about 7-8 minutes to figure out how to search my history with this interface.  I can pretty much guarantee that it would take a "typical user" longer...  Hence requesting blocking.

Do we need a separate bug on the "selected folder" thing not working?

Comment 1

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

I think bug 378798, bug 331403 and bug 407416 are related to this.  However, the former bug isn't at all clear as to what it's going to address.

Comment 2

[Mike Beltzner [:beltzner, not reading bugmail]]

I can't really block on this, despite agreeing with the summary.

Is there a bug to change the default advanced search option to "Search selected folder"? That would pretty much solve this, I think ... also, we might need a "Everything" button which searches across bookmarks and history.

Madhava will have more (and perhaps better) ideas, I'm sure!

Comment 3

[Shlomi Fish]

On my system - Mandriva Linux Cooker running on a P4 ; Firefox 3.0.1 from Mandriva RPMs:

* Step 2: says "Search history".

* Step 4: shows results from history.

* Step 5+6: Selected Folder is disabled so it's irrelevant.

So this bug seems to have been fixed, and I suggest closing it.

Regards,
-- Shlomi Fish

Comment 4

[Tracy Walker [:tracy]]

correct, this interface went through many changes since the file date. The expected results are as reporter indicated. - WFM

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Bug 451915 - move Firefox/Places bugs to Firefox/Bookmarks and History. Remove all bugspam from this move by filtering for the string "places-to-b-and-h".

In Thunderbird 3.0b, you do that as follows:
Tools | Message Filters
Make sure the correct account is selected. Click "New"
Conditions: Body   contains   places-to-b-and-h
Change the action to "Delete Message".
Select "Manually Run" from the dropdown at the top.
Click OK.

Select the filter in the list, make sure "Inbox" is selected at the bottom, and click "Run Now". This should delete all the bugspam. You can then delete the filter.

Gerv